


I Worry

by paupotter_4869



Series: The Most Important Thing. . . [5]
Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Fireflies, One Shot, Salt Lake City, Saving, Short Drabble, joel learns the truth about marlene's intentions and is so not happy with them, joel to the rescue, sant mary's hospital, saving ellie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27934237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paupotter_4869/pseuds/paupotter_4869
Summary: Joel and Ellie finally make it to Salt Lake City. At the St. Mary Hospital's doorstep, when he finds Ellie unconscious, he is knocked out cold by one of the Fireflies soldiers.This begins right when Joel wakes up, with the ensuing conversation and revelations from Marlene, and Joel's decision to save Ellie.
Relationships: Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Series: The Most Important Thing. . . [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033674
Kudos: 8





	I Worry

**Author's Note:**

> All credit to Naughty Dog. I do not own anything.

In spite of waking up with a terrible headache and feeling a bit groggy, his first thoughts concerned her—Ellie. He needed to have a word with that soldier who tackled him without listening to arguments, risking Ellie’s life, and, therefore, risking everyone’s hopes for survival and finding a cure. 

He found himself in a hospital room—not that it had any resemblance to what hospitals used to be—with Marlene and a petty soldier of hers. Once Marlene had confirmed him he had indeed found the Fireflies, his only and first concern was Ellie. She was his first and foremost priority, now. He wouldn’t have forgiven himself if after all the past months, after everything they’d done and been through, he had just lost her right at the doorstep of the Fireflies’ hospital. 

Marlene’s reassurances that the doctors managed to bring Ellie back allowed his heart to beat again. He’d suffered three heart attacks since he’d rescued her from the water and realized she wasn’t breathing. It wouldn’t have been right, not after she’d fought like hell to get to Salt Lake City. Ellie had fought teeth and nails to get to Marlene, she’d done and seen things no fourteen-year-old should have, and for some reason, she still believed in humankind and was willing to let Marlene’s doctors run all the tests they wanted in order to find a cure. Joel couldn’t really understand, but he’d accepted it a long time ago. 

Groaning, truly feeling a bit too old for this world, he attempted to stand, wishing to see and talk to Ellie. More than any other basic need, more than food, water, or rest, he needed to see her. 

“You don’t have to worry about her anymore. We’ll take care of—” 

“I worry,” he interjected. 

Although that didn’t quite cover it, did it. The word _worry_ didn’t even come close to how he felt towards Ellie, the intrinsic drive to protect her from the world, to have her close, and make sure no harm came to her. His first thought in the morning and his last at night concerned her. It was almost. . . Yes, it almost was the love a parent felt for her child. 

“Just. . . Let me see her, please.”

“You can’t. She’s being prepped for surgery.”

“The hell you mean, surgery?” he scowled, completely at a loss. He stood then, demanding answers. They were only supposed to extract some samples to analyze and let him and Ellie be on their way—that’s what he told Ellie, a while back. What the hell were they attempting to achieve with surgery? 

As Marlene talked about a mutation in Ellie’s brain and the cordyceps, the reason why she was immune, and how they were hoping to reverse engineer a vaccine, Joel’s anger grew. Marlene didn’t say anything for certain, she didn’t _know_ anything for certain. It was all just hypothesis and conjectures and blind hope—the doctors didn’t even know if removing Ellie’s cordyceps was the key to making the cure. And that procedure. . . Joel knew very little about science, but he did know the cordyceps spread and grew all over the brain. Extracting it would just kill the host. . . 

It would kill Ellie. 

No. He wasn’t going to allow it. Marlene did set them up from the beginning—she knew Ellie was going to be sacrificed for the so-called greater good and still, she asked _him_ , of all people, to deliver the girl to the Fireflies. Who in the right mind would be willing to sacrifice a fourteen-year-old girl, without any actual reassurances that a cure was possible? 

“Find someone else,” he ordered, his voice low and threatening. They hadn’t traveled cross-country, and struggled through all they had suffered, only to bring Ellie to her death. 

“There is no one else.”

The answer should have been simple: they shouldn’t get the cure, then, if it implied taking a girl’s life. They’d survived more than twenty years living with Infected in an Apocalyptic world. What difference would it make to keep on living that way? He could pretend he’d never heard of a possible cure and go back to Tommy’s. As a matter of fact, Marlene shouldn’t have considered creating a vaccine at the cost of Ellie. How was _he_ the only one to see it?

Those were the arguments he tried to make, when his advance toward Marlene made the soldier anxious and the man tackled him to the ground. Defeated, Joel stayed there, without even trying to fight, anymore. He was tired and drained and in shock. The hospital was gigantic and he didn’t even know where was the operating room or how many Fireflies were there. He would never find Ellie in time to stop the meaningless massacre. 

“I get it. But whatever it is you think you’re going through right now, is nothing compared to what I’ve been through,” Marlene tried to argue, after stopping the soldier from beating the crap out of Joel. “I knew her since she was born. I knew her mother.” 

“Then why are you letting this happen?” Joel pleaded from the floor. 

“Because this isn’t about me! Or even her,” Marlene said, not that Joel believed a word she’d said. “There is no other choice here.” 

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that bullshit,” he scowled, unable to look at her in the eye out of anger and rage. It wasn’t right, couldn’t she see that? 

Marlene claimed to care about Ellie, she even claimed to love her like a daughter. . . She had no idea what she was talking about. No parent would ever sacrifice their child. Even if one life could save thousands and millions more, it wasn’t worth it. And no parent should, either, outlive one of their children—much less, two. How will he be able to move on now? 

“March him out of here. If he tries anything, shoot him.”

Briefly, Joel wondered if he shouldn’t just let the guard put a bullet between his eyes, end his misery right there and then. Because, if Ellie wasn’t going to leave the hospital and they weren’t going back to Tommy’s as he’d promised, what would be the point? 

A deeply-engraved sense of survival kept Joel moving. He hadn’t surrendered or given up in the twenty years that had passed since Sarah’s death, he wasn’t about to throw in the towel now of all times. Surrendering was against all of his instincts. He stood and walked out of the room, slow and dispassionately, regretting every movement. 

How was he supposed to look himself in the mirror come morning, after leaving Ellie at the butcher’s house? How will he be able to leave his bed every morning at all? 

Outside in the hall, he saw his backpack forgotten on the counter, with all of his weapons and ammo. 

That little voice inside his head, not really his conscience for that one had vanished twenty long years before, rang now. Was he really going to leave the hospital, forget about Ellie, and let Marlene and ger goonies murder in cold blood an innocent and harmless fourteen-year-old girl? 

This time around, the answer was beautifully simple, too. 

_No._ No, he wasn’t. 

He carried enough weaponry to take out a small army, he reckoned, and Marlene did say she’d lost most of her crew getting to Salt Lake City. How many men could there possibly be at the hospital? How many threats between him and Ellie? It didn’t matter. 

Joel closed his eyes, a half-formed plan in his mind. He didn’t really like the odds he would face, but at that moment, it didn’t make a difference whatsoever. He only had Ellie in his mind. All he knew was he wasn’t going to let Marlene commit a murder unpunished. If it was too late to save Ellie, he would make them pay, and he would go down fighting, come Hell or high water. If the Fireflies had barely any strength left as it was, manpower wise, he would diminish their resources and possibilities for survival even more. 

He came to a halt. 

“The fuck are you doing? Keep walking!” the soldier commanded behind him. Joel took a deep breath. He knew what he had to do, now.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it ! :)


End file.
